Jucius Maximus's Journal: Trends in Metamoderation?

Has anyone else noticed that the metamoderation page has recently started to serve messages that are obvious trolls/offtopic/crapflood and fewer items that are ontopic and provide new and interesting information? It wasn't always like this. Even three weeks ago there was nary a crapflood or "Malda is gay" post appearing there.

Is this some sort of deliberate experiment? Or is the troll population exploding? Or am I just seeing random conspiracies when none are present?

What's up with this? Am I the only one that is noticing this? And if you see it too, what do you think it means?

Hmmmm

[Mr.Intel]

Well, I must say that after meta-modding the past six months, the only trend I see is that there is none. Today, I M2'd 10 negative moderations. Yesterday 9 pos to 1 neg. The day before about the same. Saturday, it was all neg but one pos. So taken on the whole, it is about even.

That's just me though.

I agree

[uglyduckling]

Yes, I would definitely agree that the sig/noise ratio in the M2 page has gone down recently. I've been wondering about it myself and thought I was imagining it, but now someone has said it, I don't feel so silly!

Don't know what it means, though.

I don't think there's a conspiracy here...

[ncc74656]

Usually, I'll get mostly good posts (and positive moderations) or mostly FPs/trolls/crapflooders (and negative moderations). You would think the software would mix the two up a bit more, but it doesn't seem to do that. Maybe it comes from moderators' habits...I tend to mod posts up, while there are some who seem to always mod down. If moderations are metamodded in the order they're created, that would explain why you see them in the proportions that they come up.

(While we're on the subject of metamodding, I'd suggest automatically metamodding "-1, Redundant" mods as unfair. Given the different ways people can read /. (chronological vs. reverse chronological, threaded vs. nested vs. flat), it's almost inevitable that there will be some small amount of duplication in replies. If it's a quality post (not flamebait, troll, or whatever), why should someone who's late to reply get penalized for not constantly monitoring /. and getting in early with the FPers?)

Re:I don't think there's a conspiracy here...

[littlerubberfeet]

I agree completely. I always metamoderate the redundant ones as unfair. I never moderate anything redundant. Why not just eliminate the category?

mm2 trends

[diggem]

Maybe it's just that more people are HUNTING the trolls with their mod points? Generally I don't think there is anything other than pure chance at work here.. though I've noticed that some things seem to trend in strange ways when it comes to human beings. It's like we all subconciously read eachothers minds or something. Then again that might be my own brain looking for sense in a rather random and non-sensicle world. Bleh. :)

blackout?

[Smitty825]

I don't know how accurate this is, but maybe the blackout is starting to show its face. Several people supported the slashdot blackout, and from what I've been told, at least the first few days the signal to noise ratio was higher...